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Thrift Store Score: $120 for Just the Box?! This 80's Toy’s Worth Over $300
We're going to turn $55 into $300 in just 24 hours.
Issue #66
What’s up, Mat here and the hits just keep on coming. The big thing I found this week is a category that’s always really fun for me to find and I’m starting to really enjoy: 80’s toys. The shows and movies the toys are based off are way before my time and I don’t really know what they’re about, but there’s something about finding what many people class as holy grail items in a random thrift store in Sydney.
I’m going to tell you all about it below plus we’re going to jump into Secondhand Opinions for the second week. We had some good feedback and I’ll let you know how you guys voted in last weeks Issue. A reminder that you can listen to this weeks episode of the podcast here. The podcast is an extension of the newsletter and has a lot more content so if you’re after more reselling content, give it a listen.
In This Issue
What I Bought
If you were a kid in the 80’s, you might have seen the below playset on the shelves when your parents reluctantly took you to the toy store.
This immediately caught my eye. Not the Monopoly Cheaters Edition, what a dumb idea.
This is a M.A.S.K Goliath playset that was released by the toy manufacterer Kenner in 1987 based on the animated television series, also created by Kenner. The television show is something I’ve never seen or heard of… not surprising given it’s older than me and ran in the United States for only 2 years… yet somehow this toy has made its way to Sydney in almost mint condition. The series followed a law enforcement agency named M.A.S.K (Mobile Armored Strike Kommand) as they battled against a terrorist organisation named V.E.N.O.M.
I found this in a Lifeline toy store and it immediately caught my eye, the artwork on the box is not something you see nowadays with modern toys. The box features this sort of transforming truck and aircraft along with the Kenner logo and the 1987 manufacturing date.
Can you tell it’s old based solely on the artwork?
Everything on the box looked great, except when I took a closer look and saw the Lifeline price tag stating “SOLD AS IS“ with $55 written on it. Ideally I don’t want the thrift store staff to look closely at this staff, I’d prefer just a price tag, but seeing “AS IS“ on the tag means that it’s most likely missing items inside. I decided to open up the box inside the shop and could see that it was maybe… 65 - 70% complete.
Missing the aircraft, one of the figures plus their helmets.
Tip: when you have no idea what you’re looking at, like me here, the best way to see if it’s complete is to look on eBay for complete listings and just make sure you have everything pictured. If not, you’ll have to sell as incomplete.
Despite missing a few pieces, specifically the aircraft, I decided to look up comps and see what pieces were going for, because from doing this for around 18 months we know that with old toys, the original box, instructions and smaller pieces can be worth a bit of money. And what do you know…
$130 for just the box, and boy is this box tattered.
Animated GIF - the state of this box…
$30-$40 just for the missles.
$100 for the truck.
If it was complete.
Given we have the original box in amazing condition, the truck, missiles, action figure and instructions I don’t think it’s farfetched to list up for $300 + postage. Like I said, this isn’t complete but it’s a good starting off point; I wouldn’t be surprised if someone buys it just for the box. $50 into $300 for an incomplete toy… that would be cool.
Update: within an hour we’ve had 1 offer but we’ll ride it out.
21 views and an offer within an hour of listing.
This is an animated GIF, it might take a minute to load… ya donkey.
Gordon Ramsay wrote Humble Pie, his autobiography, back in 2006 before he had a million television shows and you couldn’t go on YouTube without seeing his face. When I saw this sitting on the Vinnies shelf, I had a feeling it might just be signed given it’s so old and before he was as big as he is now. I also have this book in my collection (it’s well worth the read) and knew it could fetch around $100 if I ever decided to put it up for sale. Lucky me, I got this for $3 and listed it up for $99.95.
$3 each for these plush toys.
These may look like regular, cheap plushies that you see in every Salvos however they’re actually incredibly valuable. The 2 characters are from Ben 10, a kids show that ran for just 47 episodes where the titular character, a kid named Ben can transform into 10 different aliens to, I assume, fight evil. We’ve done well with Ben 10 before, including back at the Garage Sale Trail in November (Issue #40) where we found an action figure for $5 and it sold quickly for $100.
Whenever I see any alien looking toy I immediately think back to Ben 10 and checking out the tags I could see Cartoon Network and a quick Google Lens lookup showed it was from the franchise. The 2 characters are named Big Chill and Upchuck (Upchuck is the one who looks like he’s throwing up) and the comps for him are pretty surprising.
$50 for this guy.
I couldn’t find a single comparison for Big Chill in either Active or Sold and after doing more research into him, it appears that he’s quite rare and in different forms he can sell for a lot of money.
Good lord.
Insane.
With this information in mind, I decided to list the 2 up together for a combined $99.95. Guess what? I got lucky.
That was quick.
It took less than 24 hours for these guys to sell and they were bound for America. However, before the post office could open on Monday the buyer decided to cancel (citing the reason “they wouldn’t arrive in time“) and this gave me time to re-think my position. They sold almost instantly, maybe $99.95 was too low? I don’t usually do this but I re-listed for $199.95. One can dream, right?
The final item I bought was a lesson in taking a gamble and buying quality.
This is an animated GIF, it might take a minute to load.
In the thrift we had 2 jerseys, both of the same team, the Sydney Bears (ice hockey) however one was printed and one was embroidered. Both were marked $12 and had no comps online. It’s a bit of a gamble when we can’t find any comps, so if I was going to take a risk with one of these, it has to be the higher quality item. Not the printed, but the fully embroidered.
Ice hockey isn’t very big here in Australia and this team actually can’t compete in the Australian Ice Hockey League (AIHL) for 2025 because the ring is undergoing maintenance. Yes, they couldn’t find any other ice skating rinks so they had to forfeit for the entire year. Surprisingly, I put the jersey up for $99.95 on eBay (27 views, 6 watchers) and Marketplace for $50 (50 clicks, 3 watchers) and someone is meant to be coming on Friday to buy it, so looks like a good purchase.
What I Sold
$15 into $219.95 in less than a week.
I don’t have the best experience selling sealed Pokemon cards on eBay this year (Issue #58) so I’m not going to call this a win just yet. However, we have a sale of the booster pack we picked up last week in the thrift for just $15.
The sale is sort of weird… we sold ours for $219.95, which was one of the highest active listings (there wasn’t many) and if we check eBay now, there’s still the exact same product sitting there for $149, $150+$10 shipping, $155+$10 shipping. We sold the pack before the cheaper options and for a higher price. Weird, don’t ask me why. It honestly doesn’t surprise me that this sold within the week, Pokemon is huge and I think there’s a bit of a pack shortage at the moment. Any Pokemon fans, is that true?
This was the 2nd time I’ve found sealed Pokemon cards in a thrift and I don’t think I ever will again, it’s incredibly rare and a twice in a lifetime experience.
I also couldn’t help to think that if I was 15 minutes earlier to the thrift I would have walked out with 3 packs, $45 into over $600. Oh well!
$15 into $199.95 in again, less than a week.
There’s a good reason why cameras are sought after by resellers at garage sales and thrift stores: they sell extremely fast. I prefer to pick up the digital cameras so you can chuck in a couple of batteries and actually test to see if they work - film on the other hand is a real pain, especially for a novice like myself. Sold in 8 days, $15 into $199.95.
$55 into $300.
I had a feeling this was going to sell fast. We had a $200 offer within an hour and the buyer was kind of pushy which made me want to wait things out. Few hours later and it’s sold for full price. After fees and post I’ll net $193.05 - a decent amount after outlaying $55 to buy it. I decided to message the buyer as I had a few random questions about the item and why he pulled the trigger so quickly, you can see the conversation below.
Why did you purchase this item and have you been looking for it for a while?
I don’t have this one yet. Yes and no. I collect M.A.S.K. among other things but wasn't specifically looking for this one, however box was in good condition and was local.
Were you tempted to buy from the US?
Often do if it's something specific i want, but the shipping costs (and taxes) have increased significantly as well as the unfavourable exchange rate over the last 5 years
Did you think $300 was a fair price? When buying this sort of item, what are you looking for in the listing?
I had a voucher so it made it more palatable. M.A.S.K. prices have surged post covid and with modern remakes coming out soon they will likely become harder to get. 5 good detailed images and descriptions that state if an item is a) complete b) damaged c) not sure about a or b. Also not using ai descriptions so the above content isn't lost.
Why do collectors buy incomplete sets?
I prefer complete items but these are getting harder and harder to get
What I took from the above Q&A was that the buyers aren’t a fan of the AI descriptions and to be honest, neither am I. It takes what… 30 seconds to write something out and you can use it as a marketing tool. You have the buyers attention, why would you not want to draw them in even more with a decent description? I don’t use AI descriptions anymore, everything is hand written even if I don’t know much about the item. I mean, heck take a look at this items description:
Up for grabs is a 1987 Kenner playset. Note: I don't know much about this line so please excuse the lack of specifics.
The box is in very good condition, better than anything else I've seen online. The set is incomplete. Includes the original manual. Matt Trakker figure without mask. Semi truck transport with 2 missles that shoot. Original styrofroam, sticker sheet shown in photos.
If you have any questions, please message me before purchasing. I'm also happy to send more photos.
The other thing that stood out to me is that scarcity and quality opens the door for higher selling prices and for buyers to bend their own rules. This buyer prefers to buy complete sets but because the line is hard to come by, they’re happy to get something incomplete. The buyer also stated that the box was in good condition and the reason he bought it… the box sold this thing, it’s something to keep in mind when finding this sort of thing out in the wild.
$3 into $75.
$6 into $99.95.
Secondhand Opinions
The concept is simple, we’ll throw up a controversial, or at least spicy reselling topic, I’ll present my argument whether it’s poorly thought out or not and you’ll provide your own.
Last week I asked you “Is It Okay to Haggle at a Charity Op Shop?” and here are the results:
No wins with 80% of the vote.
It seems the consensus is that No, you shouldn’t haggle at a thrift store.
This weeks topic: Should You Clean Items Before Selling Them?
I feel like this question is going to divide people. On 1 hand you have sellers who are wanting to list everything up quickly, get it out the door and not look back. They don’t mind if they don’t get the full amount that others are asking because a profit is a profit and they’re not going to spend any time cleaning. On the other side we have the sellers who want to maximize every single item they decide to sell, they spend enough time sourcing that it wouldn’t make sense financially not to squeeze it for all it’s worth and to do that you need it presentable without any marks, dust or grime.
I fall somewhere in the middle and I think it’s a good representation of me as a person. I am, to a degree, quite lazy. I clean my home regularly but I wouldn’t call it a deep clean. I clean the items I sell but I wouldn’t call it extremely thorough. Don’t get me wrong, I am not going to sell a piece of clothing that has a huge disgusting stain on it. I’m going to soak it overnight with a stain removing powder, wash it twice and see how it looks at the end.
It sounds like a lot of effort but really it’s just me being lazy. The process involves putting a piece of clothing in the laundry sink with some water and powder and the stain remover does 99% of the work. Same deal with the washing machine. I’m not really doing that much. Now on the flip side, the Kenner 1987 toy that I found in this issue could have been cleaned. Opening it up we can see a bit of dust and dirt on certain parts and you could get in there with a cotton bud. Did I though? Nah, the collector will do that, it’s too sought after to spend any time making it any more presentable.
So for me it really depends on the item and if I think it will sell with or without a clean. No-one is going to buy a dirty t-shirt with a stain that stands out in photos, but an old toy with some dust? Not the biggest deal.
Quick anecdote I had a jersey that had a stain on the front, very small but I needed to point it out. I wanted a quick sale, and these things sell fast, so I listed it up, pointed out the stain in the photo and in the description and to my surprise it sat there for weeks, didn’t sell. I decided to soak it 1 night, give it a wash and the stain was removed. From there I was able to remove the word stain from the description and remove the photo and the jersey went on to sell 3 days later.
If removing negatives from your listing is within your power, for example a stain, I think you should 100% spend the time to do it.
What do you think?
Should You Clean Items Before Selling Them? |
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